In Secret Part 47

"Is it all right for us to remain here, Kay?"

"Yes. You can see for yourself. Anybody coming into this valley must be visible on that ridge to the south. And there's an exit. This brook dashes through it--two vast granite gates that will let us through into the outer forest, where they might as well hunt for two pins as for us."

The girl smiled; her eyes closed. "I'm glad we can rest," she murmured. So McKay went about his duties.

First he removed his pack and hers a hundred yards down stream, through the granite gateway, and placed them just beyond.

Then he came back for Miss Erith. Scarcely awakened as he lifted her, she placed one arm around his neck with the sleepy unconsciousness of a tired child. They had long been on such terms; there was no escaping them in the intimacy of their common isolation and common danger.

He laid her on the moss, well screened by the granite barrier, and beyond range of the brook's rainbow spray. She was already asleep again.

He took off both her shoes, unwound the spiral puttees and gave her bruised little feet a chance to breathe.

He made camp, tested the wind and found it safe to build a fire, set water to simmer, and unpacked the tinned rations. Then he made the two beds side by side, laying down blankets and smoothing away the twigs underneath.

The surviving carrier pigeon was hungry. He fed it, lifted it still banded from its place, cleaned the cage and set it to dry in a patch of suns.h.i.+ne.

The four automatic pistols he loaded and laid on a shelf in the granite barricade; set ammunition and flashlight beside them.

Then he went to his pack and got his papers and material, and unrolled the map upon which he had been at work since he and Evelyn Erith had entered the enemy's zone of operations.

From time to time as he worked, drawing or making notes, he glanced at the sleeping girl beside him.

Never but once had the word "love" been mentioned between these two.

For a long while, now--almost from the very beginning--he had known that he was in love with this girl; but, after that one day in the garden, he also knew that there was scarcely the remotest chance that he should live to tell her so again, or that she could survive to hear him.

For when they had entered the enemy's zone below Mount Terrible they both realised that there was almost no chance of their returning.

He had lighted his pipe; and now he sat working away at his drawings, making a map of his route as best he could without instruments, and noting with rapid pencil all matters of interest for those upon whose orders he and this girl beside him had penetrated the forbidden forest of Les Errues. This for the slim chance of getting back alive. But he had long believed that, if his pigeons failed him at the crisis, no report would ever be delivered to those who sent him here, either concerning his discoveries or his fate and the fate of the girl who lay asleep beside him.

An hour later she awoke. He was still bent over his map, and she presently extended one arm and let her hand rest on his knee.

"Do you feel better, Yellow-hair?"

"Yes. Thank you for removing my shoes."

"I suppose you are hungry," he remarked.

"Yes. Are you?"

He smiled: "As usual. I wish to heaven I could run across a roebuck." They both craved something to satisfy the hunger made keen by the Alpine air, and which no concentrated rations could satisfy.

McKay seldom ventured to kill any game--merely an auerhahn, a hare or two, a red squirrel--and sometimes he had caught trout in the mountain brooks with his bare hands--the method called "tickling"

and only too familiar to Old-World poachers.

"Roebuck," she repeated trying not to speak wistfully.

He nodded: "One crossed the stream below. I saw the tracks in the moss, which was still stirring where the foot had pressed."

"Dare you risk a shot in Les Errues, Kay?"

"I don't think I'd hesitate."

After a silence: "Why don't you rest? You must be dead tired," she said. And he felt a slight pressure of her fingers drawing him.

So he laid aside his work, dropped upon his blanket, and turned on his left side, looking at her.

"You have not yet seen any sign of the place from which you once looked out across the frontier and saw thousands and thousands of people as busy as a swarm of ants--have you, Kay?"

"I remember this stream and these woods. I can't seem to recollect how far or in which direction I turned after pa.s.sing this granite gorge."

"Did you go far?"

"I can't recollect," he said. "I'd give my right arm if I could."

His worn and anxious visage touched her.

"Don't fret, Kay, dear," she said soothingly. "We'll find it. We'll find out what the Hun is doing. We'll discover what this Great Secret really is. And our pigeons shall tell it to the world."

And, as always, she smiled cheerfully, confidently. He had never heard her whine, had never seen her falter save from sheer physical weariness.

"We'll win through, Yellow-hair," he said, looking steadily into her clear brown-gold eyes.

"Of course. You are so wonderful, Kay."

"That is the most wonderful thing in the world, Evelyn--to hear you tell me such a thing!"

"Don't you know I think so?"

"I can't believe it--after what you know of me--"

"Kay!"

"I'm sorry--but a scar is a scar--"

"There is no scar! Do you hear me! No scar, no stain! Don't you suppose a woman can judge? And I have my own opinion of you, Kay--and it is a perfectly good opinion and suits me."

She smiled, closed her eyes as though closing the discussion, opened them and smiled again at him.

And now, as always, he wondered how this fair young girl could find courage to smile in the very presence of the most dreadful death any living woman could suffer--death from the Hun.

He lay looking at her and she at him, for a while.

In the silence, a dry stick snapped and McKay was on his feet as though it had been the crack of a pistol.

Presently he stooped, and she lifted her pretty head and rested one ear close to his lips:

"It's that roebuck, I think, down stream." Then something happened; her ear touched his mouth--or his lips, forming some word, came into contact with her--so that it was as though he had kissed her and she had responded.

Both recoiled; her face was bright with mounting colour and he seemed scared. Yet both knew it was not a caress; but she feared he thought she had invited one, and he feared she believed he had offered one.